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Of course.

If you ask a really difficult question, I will say that I have answered it already. [Laughter.]

I hope that all organisations, whether they be agencies or the cultural organisations whose funding flows from them, can have maximum clarity as quickly as possible for the obvious reasons that we have been talking about.

I agree 100 per cent that communities need to know what is happening with local buildings or cultural attractions for a number of reasons, including the fact that people want to access them and so want to understand when they are open.

Here is another thought: some places might want to support the maintenance, restoration or reopening of facilities. One might similarly say that there might be philanthropists or funding organisations that have a particular geographical interest or historical connection. One might have a name that connects one to a place or a building. We can think of people around the world who feel like that. North America is full of people with Scottish surnames, and they feel a genuine connection to a place because of their name. It has struck me for a while that helping people to make a connection with a place, a name, a building or a cultural site has potential as a funding stream.

I am keen to explore that, because if I meet people from the United States who feel that they come from a particular part of Scotland and they would want to make a contribution to that part of Scotland, it might be that there is potential to match people’s interest and support to address the challenge that we are talking about in the context of Historic Environment Scotland. I am interested in the committee’s thoughts. I am not fishing for reflections on that right now, but there is something in our being able to match up community interest in local buildings, historic sites and so on with the interests of others elsewhere. That might be a way to supplement the projects that are under way to protect our historic infrastructure. Anything that might secure additional funding streams or public support would be a good thing.

Was it something I said?

If Ms Baird wants to jump in, she is free to do that at any stage.

I have a couple of reflections on that. With regard to multiyear funding certainty, I have given evidence to the committee before that, in the Government, we appreciate the need for the maximum certainty about medium and longer-term budgetary projections, regardless of whether people get the happiest news. The need to have some sense of the planning horizon is absolutely understood. I hope that people will appreciate that the current economic situation, which is not of our making, is making our lives more difficult with regard to the ability to satisfy that perfectly reasonable demand. However, we still aim to give projects and organisations the maximum possible longer-term understanding of their financial outlook. That is point 1.

Point 2 is that there is another dimension to Mr Ruskell’s observation, which he did not mention but which is important to consider in this context: many projects are supported to start up, grow and find their feet, because they believe that, once they are up and running, they will be self-funding or significantly self-funding. There is also a tension in that context, because it is not always the case that they reach the position of being as self-funded or totally funded as they initially planned to be.

Therein lies a challenge for funding bodies, whether that is Creative Scotland or any other, which is wanting to make sure that one uses funds to let a thousand flowers bloom while not always being the ultimate paymaster for everything for ever. It takes the wisdom of Solomon to work out how one can always get that right.

As with our present budgetary challenge, organisations that are trying to set up and become as financially successful as they can be suddenly find being themselves buffeted by these kinds of challenges and others. We do not need to go into Covid as the most recent example of something that very few people saw coming as a challenge at the scale that it was.

I am just adding another dimension to Mr Ruskell’s point, and I agree with him that the intention is, for obvious reasons, to give people the maximum potential understanding of where funding support is and will be over a number of years, but the issue of sustainability of funding also has the added dimension that not all projects are supported with a view to being funded for ever—for example, if the funding is starting up, the project is time limited or the organisation is doing a particular job.

I understand that there are a load of organisations out there that are funded regularly, deserve to be funded regularly and are assessed as being good value for money and worthy of support. We need to do that as well as we can in constrained times. I will be absolutely frank with the committee: it is not easy for those organisations, and it is not easy for colleagues in the Government or agencies such as Creative Scotland and others to match the ambition of maintaining public support for cultural institutions, but we will have to try and do our best to get through the very bumpy period that we are entering. We are not even in the eye of the storm yet.

Is there anything from your side, Lisa?

The committee is seized of the subject—let us just leave it at that. I commend the committee’s interest, and I want to hear any suggestions and feedback that it has.

We did not talk about that before the evidence session; I feel as though you have been reading my mind on that very point.

Those of you who were at the culture summit will know, because I mentioned it, that we have an opportunity to take twinning a lot more seriously. I raised that point with UNESCO yesterday, because it seems to me that it is ideally placed to help to drive that, together with the Ukrainian authorities, which, of course, would have to be at the heart of making such an approach work.

For those of you who have not heard me make the point before, after the second world war, it was decided that, for a number of reasons, twinning arrangements would be a very useful way for countries to be able to help one another to rebuild, come together and emerge from conflict. If you look at the twinning arrangements that we have had in Scotland, which were largely with French and German towns and cities, that purpose was very clear. There was an exchange of people, especially with France and Germany, which was very important after the first and second world wars.

I think that there is an added dimension to that. UNESCO told me yesterday that, in Ukraine, 198 sites of particular importance—I think that I am right in saying that—have been totally or significantly destroyed. It is using satellite imagery to log the damage to cultural sites in real time. That is something new that it is doing—it has not done that in the past. It was not able to do it in Syria, for example, and although it was not able to do the preparatory work, it is now involved in the rebuilding of parts of Mosul.

UNESCO is very keen to do a lot of the preparatory work during the conflict so that when it ends—pray God it ends as soon as possible, with a victory for Ukraine and the restoration of peace and justice—cultural organisations such as UNESCO will be able to work in partnership with the likes of the Ukrainian culture ministry to find out exactly where one should intervene to help with rebuilding. High-profile commitments have already been made to rebuild the theatre in Mariupol, for example, but there are countless hamlets, villages and towns where the church or synagogue, or other sites of particular importance, have been destroyed.

To come back to my point about twinning, it is great that cities such as Edinburgh have twinned with Kyiv and that cities such as Glasgow have been looking at twinning arrangements with Ukraine, but would it not be all the more effective if towns, small towns and villages as well as cities here, but internationally too, twinned with other communities in Ukraine? That is the point that I was making about UNESCO: as a United Nations organisation with national delegations, it is in an ideal position. If it could push that sort of thing down through its organisation and encourage multiple twinning arrangements with small villages and towns that have lost their hospitals, their libraries and their public services as a way of rebuilding those communities and their cultural sites as a priority as they emerge from conflict—as soon as that might come—that would, I think, be the best way forward.

There might well be other ways of doing such work, but that solution strikes me as a particularly attractive one. I have raised it at the Edinburgh international culture summit and with colleagues in different political groups in the European Parliament in an effort to get them to adopt it and push it down through the system, and I have talked about it with the British ambassador to UNESCO in order to get her to encourage the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in England to think about it, too. If there is any best practice that we can establish here, let us do it. I know from speaking to the Ukrainian consul general in Edinburgh about it that the Ukrainians are extremely keen on the idea. Why not have a look at what we can do and encourage others to do likewise?

Absolutely, but there is a wider point to take into consideration. The cultural organisations can give specific advice on the built heritage, such as churches, synagogues and the like, but there is also the wider issue of municipal reconstruction. After all, we have seen the wholesale destruction of towns, where literally all that is left are the roads and the sewerage system, and communities right across Ukraine are going to need expertise to rebuild those towns. Our local authorities might be able to play a role in that, as they have excellent road and housing departments. Our colleagues at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities might also be able to look at that. There might be ways in which we can help in a broader sense. I think that it would be excellent if we were aspire to that.

I was not being serious when I said that I would not answer difficult questions, and that is a difficult question. The reason why it is a difficult question is that it concerns part of the emergency budget process that we are currently in. All our funding decisions are part of the review process.

I do not want to misquote the Deputy First Minister, so I have brought along what he had to say about timelines, because it is important. He has made the point, which is understandable, that we are in a difficult circumstance because of the impact of the recent UK mini-budget. We are aware of the problems that that brought, but we have the added challenge that it has not been informed by independent forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility. That is why—I think that all colleagues know this—the Deputy First Minister has announced that he now has an advisory panel that is helping to advise him during the emergency budget process that we are having to go through in Scotland as a result of what has gone on elsewhere.

In giving evidence to the Finance and Public Administration Committee, the Deputy First Minister said:

“I am expecting to conclude the Scottish Government’s emergency budget review in late October”.

He also said:

“As part of that work, I have established an expert panel of economists who will assess the impact on Scotland of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s fiscal approach.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 4 October 2022; c 3.]

I imagine that Ms Baker may already have a supplementary question about the fact that there are cultural organisations that want to have the best clarity about their financial situation. I made that point in general terms to Mr Ruskell, because the Government has an aspiration, which I know that the committee shares, to have a much more multiannual approach to funding decisions and an understanding of the financial horizon for all kinds of organisations. I appreciate that, at present, there are some that do not have that.

There is still an aspiration to try to give the maximum understanding over more than one financial year. I recognise that we are in the middle of a budget process in which decisions are having to be made, and that people will want to have certainty as quickly as they can. I am really not in a position to go further than to say that I appreciate the point that is being made. I understand the question that is being asked, but I am not in a position to answer in detail, save to say that it is an absolute priority for me that, if any organisation needs urgent clarification, I would want to seek to be able to provide that.

If Ms Baker has in mind any specific cases that she wants my officials to be aware of, she should raise them. However, I have pointed out the process that the Deputy First Minister is engaged in. I am very actively involved in vocally supporting the protection of maximum spending capability in the culture portfolio. That is also on-going.

I hope to be able to report back in person or in writing, if that is more expeditious, as soon as we are able to confirm the details of what that will mean in general terms, but also to ensure that, if there are any specific cultural organisations that need clarity, they have that as quickly as possible. However, I hope that Ms Baker appreciates that I cannot go further than that. The timing is unfortunate, given the circumstances. We are trying to talk about the budgetary process while it is still on-going, in the middle of a financial crisis.

I will try to get back as quickly as I can to give the detail to members of the committee, but also to any organisations that feel that they are in that acute situation.